Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

profitable? ..... reasonable living? ..... well i guess it's a matter of degree as to how you determine that ..... certainly our small and growing local brewery (rebellion) is doing very well, and i think they actually own one proper-sized pub about 1/2 mile from the brewery site

At the end of Oct last year there were more than 1000 micro breweries in the UK.
The numbers since then have continued to increase.
London alone has 47,up from 36 in 2912 and another 11 gearing up.
Hackney alone went from 5 to 6 in the last month.
There are lot of free houses selling these beers from London and the
rest of the UK. I personally use 15 of these, spread from High Barnet
to Twickenham and Stratford. They also sell a wide variety of ciders
on hand pump and gravity.They also do not sell the majors.

an interesting fact but your point is?

"it is now impossible for a landlord to make even a reasonable living from just selling beer,"

The point is that it is not.. got it now?

don't confuse a micro-brewery with running a pub, and it's a racing certainty that the great majority of those pubs attached to micro-breweries also serve some sort of respectable food

If anyone's confused it isn't me.

And don't confuse micro breweries with micro pubs!

chuckle chuckle .... i confess i have slightly lost track of where this diversion started ...... with regard to disappearing pubs, i think 4/5 have gone from marlow in the last 18/24 months with one being re-opened and re-vamped, though i'm not sure what it's like ...... and fable has it, that in the 1950's henley had something like 180 pubs - true or false, i really do not know

There have been numerous reasons why "some" pubs have closed over the years, lazy landlords being one of them.

From Stan's link - The MICROPUB DIRECTORY

And

List of Microbreweries

stan - being a slightly cynical old fart, i have also known cases where the breweries have intentionally installed poor landlords so that the place gets more and more run down and thus unviable - then lo and behold, planning permission is submitted to turn it into expensive housing development

Yes sadly this is true.

I live a few doors along from a pub and after the noise/music level last Friday & Saturday night I would be quite happy for it to be turned into an expensive housing development!

Was the pub already there when you moved?

You beat me to it!

Stan/skinny, yes it was, but since the no-smoking law came into force the noise level has risen a few decibels because all the drunks are outside the pub singing instead of singing inside! It's difficult to buy a house that ticks all the boxes - the pub was one of the few minuses when I bought the house.

if you bought it with the pub in situ ......!!!!
it's like peeps who buy houses adjoining golf courses complaining about balls being hit into their gardens

however, you may care to check with your local council about noise outside etc
these things are usually tightly regulated

Have you considered contacting your local Council about noise abatement DB4?

I must admit that the sight of sad middle aged men, standing outside the local spoons smoking is only trumped by sad women doing the same - a sad indictment of today's culture and lack of respect, both for self and others.

Where I am living, it is mainly young people sitting outside pubs and bars smoking.